Articles and Resources

QUOTE: The Justice Department announced Friday that it would pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army biodefense researcher intensively investigated as a “person of interest” in the deadly anthrax letters of 2001. The settlement, consisting of $2.825 million in cash and an annuity paying Dr. Hatfill $150,000 a year for 20 years, brings to an end a five-year legal battle that had recently threatened a reporter with large fines for declining to name sources she said she did not recall.

QUOTE: The lawsuit filed by Mr. Sidell in federal court in Connecticut involves an unsettled area of the law, where changes in technology create tension between expectations of personal privacy and companies’ rights to monitor the equipment they provide to employees. The case’s unusual combination of facts, which are in dispute, paves the way for a decision that could help set a precedent for dealing with personal e-mail at work.

QUOTE: The US Supreme Court announced on Monday it would examine whether a federal judge acted properly in ordering the US Navy to alter its sonar training procedures to protect whales and dolphins off the California coast.

QUOTE: Europe this month rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, changes that are forcing U.S. industries to find new ways to produce a wide range of everyday products.

QUOTE: Previous bouts of human-caused extinctions were due mainly to directed take: humans hunting for food. What we are seeing now is probably the first large animal that has ever gone extinct merely as an indirect consequence of human activity: a victim of market forces and our collective lifestyle...It is gone because too many people got too efficient at catching fish in the river and it was incidental bycatch. And it is perhaps a view of the future for much of the rest of the world and an indication that the predicted mass extinction is arriving on schedule.

QUOTE: The paper finds that there is a serious flaw in how these trade groups finger alleged file-sharers. It also suggests that some people might be getting improperly accused of sharing copyrighted content, and could even be purposely framed by other users.

QUOTE: As computer programs make images easier than ever to manipulate, editors at a growing number of scientific publications are turning into image detectives, examining figures to test their authenticity.

QUOTE: “It’s almost a time warp,” said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a nonprofit organization that studies women and work. “All the predatory and demeaning and discriminatory stuff that went on in workplaces 20, 30 years ago is alive and well in these professions.”

QUOTE: A study published online today in Science is one of the first to investigate how the brain wrestles with such morally charged tradeoffs....The findings suggest that people strive to avoid inequity, but only up to a point; maximizing the greater good is also an important--and sometimes competing--factor in such decisions.

QUOTE: This week, to mark the one-year anniversary of the bag ban, Modbury is planning a big beach cleanup -- and a new campaign. Whatever item of trash residents find the most of, they will ban next. Hosking suspects it's going to be plastic water bottles, and she is already thinking about ways to promote reusable cups for tap water.

QUOTE: But the trial, which went to the jury last week, offered arguably more for people who enjoy talk of encryption software, code-wiping booby traps or the low-tech secrets of phone company networks. It has brought into focus some startling technological revelations, provoked intriguing questions and even taught some lessons to technophiles — criminally inclined or not.

QUOTE: Lawyers representing the city in lawsuits filed by hundreds of people arrested during the convention asked Mr. Hirsch to hand over voluminous records revealing the content of messages exchanged on his service and identifying people who sent and received messages. Mr. Hirsch says that some of the subpoenaed material no longer exists and that he believes he has the right to keep other information secret.

QUOTE: The objections...appear to reflect an instinctive worry about whether parents should be giving young children cellphones at all. Jóvenes Verdes, an environmental advocacy group for young people in Spain, argues that “the mobile telephone industry is acting like the tobacco industry by designing products that addict the very young.”

QUOTE: The Homeland Security Department is testing technology that would allow its agents to use cellphones or e-mail devices to covertly share live video of possible terrorists over a law enforcement network. The idea is prompting concern from privacy advocates.

QUOTE: The Mosquito has sparked a new sort of buzz in Britain, this time among political and civil rights groups that say the device is discriminatory and treats young people as second-class citizens. Others have worried that the Mosquito is the next step in Britain's Big Brother society.

QUOTE: Expert studies have shown that the quality of all commercially available e-voting systems is abysmal, and that they are vulnerable to large-scale fraud...so why isn't everybody rushing to adopt manual counting? One important reason is that there is no money in manual systems, whereas big bucks can be made by lobbying politicians to sell e-voting systems.

QUOTE: In the past, studies have found that women, the poor and members of racial minorities were less likely to be given donor organs, which are always in short supply...Now, researchers say the same appears be true for people who live outside metropolitan areas.

QUOTE: A vast flotilla of industrial trawlers from the European Union, China, Russia and elsewhere, together with an abundance of local boats, have so thoroughly scoured northwest Africa’s ocean floor that major fish populations are collapsing. That has crippled coastal economies and added to the surge of illegal migrants who brave the high seas in wooden pirogues hoping to reach Europe.

QUOTE: No one is more vulnerable to these health risks than the Chinese, because most of the seafood in China stays at home. But foreign importers are also worried. In recent years, the European Union and Japan have imposed temporary bans on Chinese seafood because of illegal drug residues. The United States blocked imports of several types of fish this year after inspectors detected traces of illegal drugs linked to cancer.

QUOTE: A new United Nations report warns that progress toward prosperity in the world’s poorest places will be reversed unless rich countries promptly begin curbing emissions linked to global warming while also helping poorer ones leapfrog to energy sources that pollute less than coal and oil.

QUOTE: Vessels from the groups Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace tail and harass the whaling fleet, while strong protests are lodged by environmental groups, many marine biologists, and officials from the United States, Australia and other countries. But this year those complaints have intensified, largely because Japan has added a new animal to its planned harvest of more than 1,400 whales from seven species — the humpback, Megaptera novaeangliae.

QUOTE: In the decisions, the environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, contends that the genetically modified corn, or maize could affect certain butterfly species, specifically the monarch, and other beneficial insects. For instance, research this year indicates that larvae of the monarch butterfly exposed to the genetically modified corn “behave differently than other larvae.”

QUOTE: Yet Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power.

QUOTE: The question of how best to protect right whales -- which got their name as the "right whale" to kill in the heyday of whaling because they floated after being harpooned -- has proved vexing to regulators, since attempts to protect them have economic consequences for powerful political constituencies, including international shipping interests and Maine lobstermen.

QUOTE: The measure awaits the signature of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who hasn't indicated whether he will sign it. Schwarzenegger put a picture of the condor on new quarters that symbolize California. But he also fired a member of the state Fish and Game Commission who irked the gun lobby by appearing to promote the ban.

QUOTE: politicians around the country have tried to outlaw the sale of some violent games to children… [and] Citing the Constitution’s protection of free speech, federal judges have rejected attempts to regulate video games in eight cities and states since 2001… [but] New York will probably be the next state to try its chances in court.

QUOTE: The project is the latest effort of Carl Malamud, an activist who founded public.resource.org in March, with the broad intent of building “public works” accessible via the network, and with the specific plan to force the federal government to make information more publicly accessible.

QUOTE: [Although] The Apple smartphone is on what techies call a "closed" system… The work that Mac programmers and hobbyists are doing here relies on a new class of underground applications designed for the iPhone called "jailbreak" programs.

QUOTE: Since Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks.

QUOTE: a new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.

QUOTE: The market for "voluntary carbon offsets" now encompasses dozens of sellers and thousands of buyers, including individuals and corporations. But in some cases, these customers may be buying good feelings and little else.

QUOTE: On Sept. 11, 2001, the cellphone network in the Washington area was quickly overloaded as frantic residents dialed relatives and friends. Now, the District is trying to develop a high-tech wireless network for public safety officials...

QUOTE: Maryland regulators demanded an explanation from Verizon officials yesterday of why hundreds of customers have waited days and even weeks for telephone repairs this year, exceeding the state standard for missed service appointments for five months running.

QUOTE: Homeland Security officials said that many vulnerabilities exist throughout the network... These vulnerabilities could, in turn, spread the risk of cyber-attacks or data losses to some of the government's most sensitive security databases, the officials said.

QUOTE: Comcast, which provides cable service to more than 150,000 homes in Montgomery County and 24 million nationwide, informed county subscribers of a policy change that county officials say denies customers the right to take the company to court and bars class-action suits.

QUOTE: The world’s first atomic bomb test might have exposed unaware civilians in New Mexico to thousands of times the recommended level of public radiation exposure, according to reconstructed data in a new study.

QUOTE: Alex Becker, a former vice president at Stickam...was speaking out because the company was not doing enough to protect young users of its service...[but] Stickam’s vice president for marketing, denied that the site was negligent about protecting its users...

QUOTE: The debate continues over how much skilled work in the vast service sector of the American economy can migrate offshore to lower-cost nations like India. Estimates of the number of services jobs potentially at risk… range widely from a few million to more than 40 million, which is about a third of total employment in services.

QUOTE: Many of the assertions [Al] Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

QUOTE: The results [of new policies] are promising. The company will report a 60 percent decline in the number of complaints from luxury goods makers that counterfeits of their products are being sold on the site…But many of its efforts have also fallen short. Other companies whose products are not yet protected by the new anticounterfeiting measures still complain about piracy on eBay…

QUOTE: as dog breeders apply scientific precision to their age-old art, they find that the quest for genetic perfection comes with unforeseen consequences. And with DNA tests on their way for humans, the lessons of intervening in the nature of dogs may ultimately bear as much on us as on our best friends.

QUOTE: Scientists in the United States and Japan announced yesterday that they have developed artificial stem cells from adult mouse cells. If the approach can be retooled for humans, they say, it would avoid the ethical quicksand that surrounds the use of stem cells drawn from nascent human embryos.